A joint project between a division of the Ad Astra Rocket Company in Liberia and the government-owned Petroleum Refinery of Costa Rica (Spanish acronym: RECOPE) aims to generate and store hydrogen fuel to be used by the transportation sector. This hydrogen plant was recently unveiled in Guanacaste, a province that is leading the way in clean energy projects and sustainability.

According to an official press release by the Ad Astra Rocket Company (PDF), this hydrogen plant is a pilot project that will:

…explore the viability of a hydrogen-based transportation infrastructure in Costa Rica, the fundamental goal of which is to reduce the nation’s reliance on imported oil.

As explained by Ad Astra, the first phase of this project will generate hydrogen by means of an electrolyzer system that breaks water down to its two elements: hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas goes through various pressurization processes until it is stored into small tanks that are about the same size as that of those used to store the propane cooking fuel used in many household kitchens in Costa Rica. Each tank holds about one kilogram of hydrogen, which could yield a fuel efficiency of about 100 kilometers per kg of hydrogen gas once it is implemented into a fuel cell.

The hydrogen can also be further commercialized for cryogenic purposes such as dermatology surgical procedures and human organ and tissue storage.

Ad Astra is better known for its breakthrough Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) space propulsion system, which will soon undergo space trials and could one day power missions to the International Space Station. VASIMR may also be used to salvage the alarming amount of space junk that orbits our planet, endangers space mission and pollutes our universe. The most anticipated implementation of VASIMR is a future manned mission to Mars.

Ad Astra’s founder, NASA Hall of Fame Astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz, wants Ad Astra to be more than just an aerospace firm in Guanacaste, hence the inauguration of the hydrogen plant. Other projects being researched in Costa Rica include the use of bio-digestor fuel to be used in electrical power generation, and low-cost wind turbines that can be used to generate electricity for small operations.